


With all the love I had, which was not enough.

by MiserableLie95



Category: Morrissey (Musician), The Smiths
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:36:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiserableLie95/pseuds/MiserableLie95
Summary: "I have treated my heart with a ruthless abandon in poetry, in friendship, in grief and in passion. Forgive me, my darling. Let bygones be bygones. I suffer. Yet all this joy in its fashion."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I have treated my heart with a ruthless abandon in poetry, in friendship, in grief and in passion. Forgive me, my darling. Let bygones be bygones. I suffer. Yet all this joy in its fashion."

-March, 1987. London. 

Johnny stood outside of Morrissey’s flat, closing his eyes as the sun began to sink in the early March skies. There was a cigarette between his lips, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket against the chill in the air, chuffing away like an old farmer in the fields of Kildare, Morrissey used to say. Maybe he should’ve stayed there. Lived a simple life. Been an honest man. He looked back at the house, waiting for lace curtains to show signs of life behind them. He was left waiting by Morrissey all the time now, the roles had changed at some point down the line, a moment which he could not locate no matter how hard he tried. 

He turned and knocked on the door again. He was certain Morrissey knew that he was standing out there, and was simply forcing him to wait longer, one of his favorite games to play when he wanted to show that he was the one in power. They had been struggling to find common ground in recent weeks. Arguments, doors slamming, telephones ringing late at night with drunken murmurs of apologies and words of devotion, knuckles gone white from gripping the receiver too tight. There was a sense of something unraveling, of something needing to happen, but neither of them were willing to discuss the eventualities, the impossibility of continuing with the way things were going. Johnny shook his shoulders out and tried to forget the thought. There were too many things that had to be done in the present. 

Morrissey kept him standing around another five minutes, till he was clenching his jaw against the cold. He refused to go wait in the car. It was a battle of stubbornness, of unyielding frustration with one another. Morrissey finally came out with his duffle bag, wearing a knit sweater and his glasses, an rare sight in these days. He would have liked to seem the least vulnerable as possible, but Johnny knew him too well. Morrissey stood by the passengers side door of Johnny’s car and looked along the street conspicuously, avoiding his guitarists’ gaze. 

“Johnny,” Morrissey said in a low voice. 

“All right, Mozzer,” Johnny replied. He didn’t allow his annoyance to show in his tone. He wanted to reach out and touch him, to break down the wall his singer had built up around himself with physicality before the three hour drive to the studios. He settled for a firm hand on his shoulder, and Morrissey sniffed and turned away from him. 

The start of another year had caused friction between the two of them, only exacerbated by Morrissey wandering into the studio in London one day to find him working on a track with John Porter and Bryan Ferry. Morrissey had stood there, saying nothing, his eyes wide as the old mistrustfulness swirled inside of him. It wasn’t the first time, but it stuck in his mind for weeks afterwards. He didn’t have to dwell very long on the question of “what more does he need?” to find that the answer filled him with fear. Johnny wanted to embark on stadium tours, he wanted to make videos, he was very willing to do anything it took to increase the popularity of the group. His ambition was not a new development, but Morrissey’s unfaltering refusals in recent months were. There was a period in which it seemed there was nothing they could agree on; not the direction of the group, their new American manager, the people Johnny was hanging around with, nor any of their previously discussed engagements. 

There had been a very candid interview Johnny gave with the NME one month previously that weighed heavily on Morrissey's mind, and said much more than the guitarist had been willing to say to him. It had been Johnny's idea to do the interview. He had become interested in shifting the spotlight, and Morrissey had been perturbed by Johnny's sudden interest in wanting to give interviews, as his focus had always been solely on writing the records, but he had not minded Johnny heeding the call of the ravenous press. The contents of the interview had been revealing. Johnny had claimed they'd all become a little too committed to the band, and stated that his personal life had become too tied up with the group and his singer, and that he had consciously taken a step back from things out of sheer necessity. And so he had, Morrissey thought. There had been a sense of strain in the months following their summer tour in America, and since then there had been moments when he could tell Johnny was holding himself back on purpose, keeping a steady distance between them. It had been the incidents at their gigs in Newport and Newcastle that autumn that had brought Johnny back to his side, but they were separate again, it seemed, in the early spring of 1987. 

They scarcely spoke during the drive west. Morrissey was decidedly distant, so Johnny kept the radio on low and tried to ignore the urge to reach over and take his lover's hand in his own. There were periods of despondency that overtook his partner, he had grown used to that. But there was something about the set of Morrissey's jaw, the squaring of his shoulders as he leaned away from him that made Johnny think that this was something else. It didn’t seem to be a good omen, on the way down to the studio to record the group’s fourth album. 

Outside of the city, Johnny lit another cigarette. Morrissey's thought of spending part of the drive reading had been quickly diminished as the sky darkened overhead, and he directed his irritability towards his guitarist. “Could you open a window if you’re going to insist on smoking throughout the entire journey?” Morrissey asked. 

“It’s too cold,” Johnny said, coughing. “And I need the cigarette. Driving through countryside makes me wistful for lives I've never had." He kept the cigarette between his lips as he spoke, lifting one hand to gesture at the rolling fields they were speeding past. "All those quiet lives of routine and responsibility. I wish I knew how the hell do they do it- how they get on through every day and all that. I wish I knew how everyone around the world fucking copes with the shit that gets put down on you throughout the course of a lifetime." 

"They don't think about it," Morrissey said. 

“Do you really believe that?” Johnny asked. He risked a look over at his partner, his eyebrows raised. When had he become so cynical? What had happened? The older man had his arm propped up against the window, his hand in his hair. He looked weary, but Johnny knew better at this point than to inquire why. 

“Yes,” Morrissey sighed in response. “I do.” 

Johnny cracked open the window and didn’t try to talk to him again. He had called ahead to the studio lodgings, where there would be cases of beer and bottles of liquor to fill up the lengthy silence that was stretching between the two of them. Mike and Andy weren’t scheduled to arrive until the following morning, and Johnny had envisioned the night with just him and Morrissey before recording was due to start being spent discussing their plans, settling back into the perfect harmony that their songwriting created. They were no longer writing face to face, as they used to, but Johnny felt no less positive about the record they were setting out to make. They had a manager, he had his vision for how the record would sound, and they were not under duress like the recording of The Queen Is Dead. It was only a matter of getting Morrissey to cooperate, which was becoming increasingly difficult. He was finding that he no longer had the same touch that he used to, he could no longer influence his partner in the same way. Things had changed within him- because they had to. Nearly five years in now, he could no longer support or agree with every whim and damaging decision that Morrissey made, which brought him more trouble by the day, and put a great strain on their once stalwart intimacy, and destroyed the old feeling of it being the two of them against the world. 

Once they had arrived at the cottage Morrissey cordoned himself off in the main bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Johnny left his bags in the living room, for he would move into his own cottage a bit further out the next day, then went down to the studio to pick up one of the cases of liquor that had been left out for him. He stationed himself in the living room with his guitar by the big windows, a cold and miserable March evening stretched out ahead of him. He built a fire and sat for hours, with his guitar and a bottle of gin. He didn’t know if he was giving Morrissey space or if he was giving himself space, and it all blurred together after a while. 

Johnny found himself feeling angrier as the night wore on and it became clear that Morrissey had no intention of joining him. He no longer knew who they were becoming, and the lack of control frightened him. For the first time they were going into the studio to make a record without any finished songs, and there was a feeling of uncertainty between himself and Morrissey that were very difficult to ignore- a chain of unbearable events, Morrissey’s refusals to participate in previously agreed promotional videos and tv appearances, his staunch dismissals of any and every tour manager they had ever employed, the stresses of their record label situation, the out of hand American tour, his drunken car crash, the nonsense with Craig Gannon- everything that was straining their relationship felt as though it was beginning to culminate, and he felt in his heart that he simply would not shoulder the blame for it, as he was the one doing everything in his power to keep the group running. 

He waited until he the gin built up the courage for him, and, with steely determination, opened the door to the bedroom and looked in on Morrissey. His singer was still fully dressed, and sat at the desk by the window with his notebooks spread out in front of him. “You’re not sleeping, then,” Johnny said, leaning his head against the doorframe. 

“I’m not,” Morrissey agreed. 

“Were you planning to come out of here at all?” Johnny asked. 

“No.” 

“Right,” Johnny said, nodding. He didn't even sound like himself when he heard the words come out of his mouth. “Well d’you mind telling me what it is we’re doing here? Because I’m not sure I even know anymore.” 

“What does that mean?” Morrissey spluttered. 

“I wish you’d tell me,” Johnny shrugged. 

His words tumbled together, and Morrissey raised his eyebrows. He immediately recognized the tone of Johnny’s voice when he’d had too much to drink. It was nearly a permanent state, for reasons he couldn’t say. 

“We’re here to do a record, Johnny,” Morrissey said slowly. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” 

“Do a record, right,” Johnny nodded. Rather agreeable. He put his hand through his hair, which he’d begun to wear like Morrissey’s in recent months. “And how do you reckon that will happen if you don’t come out and sit down with me to write the bloody songs?” 

“I am writing songs,” Morrissey said. 

“Are you even fucking listening to me?” Johnny exclaimed. “I’ve been sitting out there for hours waiting for you to join me.” 

“I was under the impression that you don’t need me to be able to write songs,” Morrissey answered.

Johnny laughed. Another backhanded reference to him working on songs with other people, despite Morrissey’s previous insistence of him being perfectly fine with Johnny working with other people. It was true that him and Morrissey didn’t always write songs together, but by this point, a day before they were meant to begin recording, they usually knew what they were going to be playing. The lack of cohesiveness between the two of them was alarming, and he knew, based on recent events, that something had to change. He would start with the record. He wanted it to be different from everything that they had done before, and he needed Morrissey to be on top form alongside him. The intensity surrounding The Queen Is Dead- his marriage, the difficulties with the label, and the heavy circumstances of his and Morrissey’s relationship had all shown in the record. 

“Listen, you can let me know when you’re ready to be serious,” Johnny said. “I’m tired of all this shit. This isn’t the way that I want to feel going in to make a record.” He left the room with that, headed back to the bottle he’d left in the living room. 

Morrissey shut his notebooks with a frown. He knew well enough that Johnny was at his happiest when he was able to make a record. It took him over completely, and he loved bringing their songs to life. As frustrated and isolated as he had begun to feel around Johnny, he wouldn’t deny him that. He couldn’t. He got up and went over into the living room, where Johnny had put aside the guitar in favor of staring at the fire with a bottle between his hands. 

“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about,” Morrissey said. 

Johnny turned his head to look at him and snorted, drumming his fingers against the bottle. “Do you realize that I’ve spent just about every moment of the past five years either with you or working on something for the group? And this is what I get for it? Songwriter, manager, producer, nursemaid, lover- everything on my fucking shoulders. If you continue to keep making it so difficult to get to where we need to be then I don’t think I can take this much further.” 

“Oh, you don’t?” Morrissey repeated coldly. He could feel his blood boiling at the spite in Johnny’s voice, but he didn’t feel surprised by the outburst. He had observed the signs of Johnny beginning to distance himself, of no longer taking his side as he once did without hesitation. “And what do you think I’ve been doing the past five years then? Simply existing to make your life difficult?” 

“No,” Johnny said hollowly. He took another pull from the bottle and rubbed his hand over his face, looking down at the floor. “I’m frustrated. I don’t know how to say it, but something’s got to be different here. It’s a start that we’ve got a new manager, but I still need to get away from these tags that the press have put on the group, from this fucking repetitive role I’m in. There’s got to be something more.” 

“Could you elaborate on what more you want? Here I was thinking that you already had everything you could possibly desire. Certainly more than what we had initially set out for,” Morrissey said bitterly. 

His tone was harsh, and the insinuation beneath his carefully chosen words did not escape Johnny. In Morrissey’s eyes, Johnny had gotten the best of everything since the group became successful. Money, a number of accolades for his talent, a high profile in Manchester and London with his wife that got him into clubs and kept their house as party central whenever he was around, notoriety as a great guitar player and as a rock ’n roller with an excess of drink and drug usage, and even an intense love affair with his songwriting partner thrown into it. 

“Am I not allowed to want something more?” Johnny asked. He stood up, taking a step towards Morrissey. 

“Well, I wasn’t,” Morrissey replied. 

“I broke my marriage vows for you,” Johnny shouted. 

“I think I may remember that day differently,” Morrissey said quietly. 

He remembered it quite well in fact, walking downstairs in his London flat one morning after they had returned from the Meat Is Murder tour dates in America, and finding Johnny sat in his kitchen at seven in the morning, completely inconsolable- trying to tell him past the lump in his throat that he needed things to return to the way that they were before. And then later, up in his bedroom, the feeling of Johnny’s wedding band digging into his hip when Johnny gripped his waist and pressed him down against the bed, certainly not something he could easily forget. He had known since the early days of being with Johnny that it shouldn’t have been happening, but he didn’t quite imagine it coming back to him like this now. 

"Ah, but aren't you so brave?” Morrissey asked. His tone was dull. It made Johnny think of the prescription pill bottles he kept in the nightstand. “Hiding behind a marriage you were coerced into for the sake of appearances.” 

Johnny’s expression hardened, and he stepped closer to Morrissey, anger flashing like a knife. “Appearances, right, you’d know nothing about keeping those up,” Johnny said. “Complete honesty, yeah? You don’t drink, just like you don’t fuck. And of course no drugs, oh, not you.” 

“You drank too much,” Morrissey said. “Just go to bed.” 

“I’m trying to talk to you - the one person who could understand the stress that I’m feeling, and you shut off and tell me you don’t know why I feel the way that I do,” Johnny fumed. He grabbed Morrissey's shoulders and pushed him against the wall before he realized what he was doing. “You give out to me for working with other musicians, like there’s anything that could matter more to me than this. Like I haven’t given everything to try to make this work. You’re not holding up your end,” Johnny shouted. 

“Let go of me,” Morrissey said darkly. He was looking somewhere above Johnny’s head, trying to keep his emotions in check. It wouldn’t do him any good to match Johnny’s anger with his own. 

“That’s all you’ve got to say to me?” Johnny asked. He pulled at Morrissey’s shirt, he was desperate for Morrissey to look at him, to realize what he was doing to them. “Do you even want this group to continue?” 

Morrissey finally looked down at him, his eyes deadly serious. “You have no idea how painful it’s been for me to carry on with all of this… How many times I thought I wouldn’t make it until morning, while you galavanted around Paris with your wife, or were seen at some nightclub with all the town trying to buy you drinks. I won’t stand here and let you talk to me like this,” he said. 

He wrenched himself from Johnny’s grip and stepped away from him then, going into the living room for Johnny’s bottle of gin, which he smashed against the sink. He didn’t say another word, and went back to the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. That people should love like this, he thought. 

Later in the night, smelling of mint and soap freshly from the shower, where he told himself he did his best thinking, Johnny got into bed next to Morrissey. It was in the dead of the night that Morrissey would relent, allow himself to be close to him. There had been so many nights now where they went to bed without speaking, only for Morrissey to search for him in the darkness of the bedroom. Having stirred when he heard the mattress creak as Johnny tried to make himself comfortable, Morrissey turned towards him, tired and silent as he wrapped his arms around him. He bent his neck and pressed his face against Johnny’s collarbone. Johnny’s fingers lightly moved along Morrissey’s neck and his ears, helping to lower Morrissey’s racing heartbeat. He had begun to think that Johnny wouldn’t come to bed at all, and the thought that this feeling would be a permanent one gnawed his nerves thin. He pressed his lips against Johnny’s chest, his arms tightening around the younger man.

“Steven- I,“ Johnny started, but he cut himself off. He no longer knew what he could tell him, what would lessen the pressure on the two of them. He put his arms around him and sighed, letting his head fall back against the pillow. "Come here," he murmured. 

Morrissey moved further up the bed, his eyes looking somewhere over Johnny's shoulder as they laid facing each other. He took a breath and met Johnny's eyes, and opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but no words came to him. In another moment Johnny put his hand under Morrissey's chin and kissed him deeply, saving them both from having to suffer through stuttered apologies and heated accusations in the middle of the night. Johnny pulled back after a few more kisses, his eyes blazing in the darkness of the bedroom. 

"I don't know when we stopped understanding each other," Johnny said. 

"No?" Morrissey replied. His voice was hollow. He rather felt that the two of them had stopped understanding one another long ago, but he didn't have the heart to get into it anymore. He didn't see how he could he continue to stand in the younger man's way, who saw the future lit up in bright lights ahead of him, and was heading full speed towards cultivating his own reputation, separate from the group they had made together. 

"I wish I knew what you wanted," Johnny continued. 

"You keep saying that," Morrissey sighed. Was it because Johnny knew what he wanted, and it wasn't what they had together? 

"Because you refuse to give me a proper answer."

"But, I want to do what we've been doing, I want to make records, nothing has changed." 

"That's what I take issue with," Johnny said. 

"Yes, I'm terribly sorry for maintaining the desires we shared once upon a time," Morrissey murmured. He turned onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. He could feel Johnny's weight shifting on the mattress, and wondered if the younger man was going to get up and leave the room, as he had been prone to doing lately whenever they tried to broach the widening gulf between them. 

"No, you're missing the point," Johnny insisted. He sat up, his back pressed against the headboard. "I want to change what we're doing. I can't make the same records again and again. I don't want to be sonically pigeon-holed. If I read another fucking review with the words 'jingle-jangle' in them again I swear I'm going to go mad. I need to do something else." 

"You can write whatever you'd like," Morrissey replied. 

"Right, sure I can," Johnny said cynically. Morrissey's musical inflexibility was well known, and the list of genres, styles, and fellow musicians that he had publicly criticized and dismissed was very long. 

"I don't want to do this right now," Morrissey sighed. He turned his head to look at the guitarist, silently pleading for Johnny to give it a rest and just let things stay as they were a little while longer until they could sort things out better. "Just stay here. We can talk in the morning." 

"All right," Johnny agreed. 

Johnny laid back down again, looking over as his singer pulled the blankets back up around them, settling down for sleep. The desire to get out was overwhelming, and he thought Morrissey could feel it. The tension between them was too much to ignore, and perhaps that was why Morrissey didn't try to reach out and touch him, pull him close and hold him as they were going to bed, the way he always did. Morrissey had learned to reach for him in darkened bedrooms at this point in their relationship, but his heart laid heavy in his chest on this night before they began to record their latest album. Something had gone awry between them, and he didn't know what it was. He couldn't understand the things Johnny was saying to him. He thought everything had been going well, but now Johnny had planted a seed of doubt, and now a sense of fear kept him from reaching out and holding his lover as they laid together in bed. When Johnny woke up in the morning, hungover and with bloodshot eyes, Morrissey had already left for the studio.


	2. Chapter 2

\- Morrissey had left a note at Johnny's cottage on the grounds of the estate that the studio was housed in, asking the guitarist to come round and see him when he was done working for the day. Johnny had returned to his cottage to call Angie and have a couple of drinks, but when he saw the note, he changed his mind and headed to where Morrissey was staying instead. It was around ten pm, and the air was dark and wet as he walked through the silent grounds to see his singer. 

The door had been left unlocked for him, so Johnny let himself in, walking through the small cottage that the singer was living in with familiar ease. 

"All right, Mozzer," Johnny called out.

"In here," He heard Morrissey reply. Johnny turned towards the kitchen, where he found Morrissey shirtless and in a pair of drawstring trousers, in the process of opening up a bottle of wine. 

"That for me?" Johnny asked. 

"I can share," Morrissey said. 

Johnny leaned in close to him and kissed him on the lips, absentminded and almost out of routine when he stepped away from him after doing so. They hadn't been seeing very much of each other in recent weeks, keeping separate schedules and activities through the writing and recording process. Johnny was almost always in bed until the afternoon, whereas Morrissey woke up around seven thirty or eight every morning and was either working through lyrics or down at the studio to figure out his vocals for whatever song the rest of the group had finished up the night before. 

"No, come here," Morrissey said.

He put down the wine and opened up his arms to the younger man. Johnny smiled, his eyes flashing for a moment. He still found it hard to resist him when he shyly made his desires clear, even now. Johnny relented despite wanting to keep his distance, and stepped into his embrace. Morrissey kissed him, wrapping his arms around the younger man's shoulders. Johnny grasped his waist, pressing his hips against Morrissey's. He pulled away and kissed Morrissey's bare shoulder and his neck, letting himself linger, his face pressed against the tendons of his neck, breathing him in slowly. 

"Christ, you smell heavenly," Johnny murmured. 

He smelled fresh and clean and of his expensive cologne, like he'd just gotten out of the bath. His singer had always been a lovely escape from the constant environment of cigarettes and lagers and pot. And, Johnny deducted, he may have very well just had gotten out of the bath, as his skin was soft and warm and scented. He kissed Morrissey's neck, sucking at his skin. Oh, how many he had adored him like this. Off guard and shy, letting him in. Johnny breathed in deeply and pushed him back against the countertop. Morrissey made a soft noise of affirmation and leaned into Johnny's touch, his hands slipping under the guitarist's shirt. 

"Oh, I've hardly seen you," Morrissey told him. 

"And I've hardly seen you," Johnny said, kissing across his shoulders. "But I can try to make up for it now, can't I?" 

"You can try," Morrissey murmured. 

Johnny tilted his head up and kissed him on the lips again, pressing him harder against the countertop in response. Morrissey smiled into the kiss and put his hands in Johnny's hair, slicked back with pomade in a rockabilly styled haircut. His hands moved through the hair at the back of Johnny's head and then fingered the small hoop earring he had taken to wearing again in recent months. Morrissey broke the kiss and looked his partner over with his hands on the lapels of his jean jacket. 

"You look so good," Morrissey told him. 

"Yeah?" Johnny asked in a hard tone.

He furrowed his eyebrows, his eyes darkening with his expression. The compliments didn't sit well with him. Morrissey complained about not seeing him, but it was a two way street. He could have gone out of his way to see him if he really wanted to, but Morrissey stayed out of his way during the recording process for the most part, leaving everything to him. He used to hang around to listen to what the group was doing; make sure Johnny got something to eat, be a part of the process. Everything had gotten so separate as the band's popularity grew. It seemed like Morrissey was always off doing something or going somewhere, while Johnny stayed alone in the studio all hours of the day and night. 

"So handsome," Morrissey murmured, kissing him again. 

Johnny sighed, but Morrissey misinterpreted it as a sign of approval as he moved his lips along the guitarists' neck. He hadn't noticed the change in his expression, nor his tone of voice. Johnny slid one of his legs between the singer's thighs, feeling the singer's growing arousal against him. Johnny kissed him on the lips, hard, and moved one hand along Morrissey's bare chest down to his stomach. There had been a lack of understanding, a rift in their cohesion for months now, but this part had always been there. This had been the way for them to come together, if only momentarily, and Morrissey wanted to cling to it while he still could. His breath caught in his throat as Johnny's fingers dipped beneath the waistband of his trousers, brushing along the thin trail of hair that led down to his cock. 

"You want a lay," Johnny reasoned. "You want to be made to feel better. You want to pretend that things are as they've always been." He moved his hand over his groin and grasped Morrissey's cock through the material of his trousers, looking up at him while he moved his hand along his length. His singer moaned his affirmation and gripped the edge of the countertop he leaned against in response and Johnny kissed him, a little too hard, too desperate, then moved away from him entirely. 

"Are you going to reprimand me for wanting you?" Morrissey asked, opening his eyes at the sudden loss of the weight of Johnny's body against his. "When did that happen?" 

"I don't know," Johnny admitted. He took a step back and looked away, shaking his head. "I don't know what to think... I don't know what the fuck I'm doing." 

"Um, would you like a glass of wine instead?" Morrissey asked. He didn't know what else to say, but managed to keep his voice even as a sad feeling of rejection settled itself in his chest. 

"Ah, sure, fuck it," Johnny shrugged. His rubbed his hand over his face and sighed. 

Morrissey reached into the cabinet to retrieve the glasses and Johnny took of his jean jacket and laid it over one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Morrissey nodded over towards the living room, where he had a fire going, and carried the glasses and the bottle of wine in behind Johnny. He didn't ask about what had just happened in the kitchen. He didn't think he wanted to know, and was old enough now to know not stick his nose in when it would only hurt him to find out what was really going on. The two of them drank together and watched the television blankly. 

When Johnny had drank enough to quiet the discontent in his mind that had been occupying him regarding his relationship to Morrissey and the future of the group, he leaned over and kissed his singer, and Morrissey didn't bother to act surprised as Johnny pushed him back against the cushions a short time later. 

"You don't want to," Morrissey said simply. Johnny was on top of him on the couch in the living room, in the middle of undressing. Morrissey's face was flushed, but he looked Johnny right in the eyes when he said it, swallowing back the lump in his throat. "I can't even remember the last time you touched me without flinching." 

"Shut up," Johnny replied, dropping his undershirt on the ground next to his sweater. 

"It's true," Morrissey said. 

"Do you want a fuck or not?" Johnny asked impatiently. 

"Do you?" 

"Look, I can just leave if you only want to argue," Johnny shrugged. 

"I don't want you to leave," Morrissey said after a moment. 

"I know." 

"I don't know if I can right now," Morrissey admitted. 

"You seemed ready enough in the kitchen." 

"And now I'm not," Morrissey shrugged. 

He cleared his throat to try to rid himself of that hurt feeling blocking his throat and looked away, because he was afraid Johnny could see that his eyes had filled up with tears. The man who had once gone to great lengths to reiterate his devotion and his love before they became intimate was no longer there, but the need for such reiteration was still important to Morrissey. He couldn't help it. It was a stubborn, permanent fixture of his psyche after so many years of hopeless longing and issues with self-worth. 

"I thought you were taking enough pills that you didn't register emotions at all now," Johnny remarked coldly. 

"Oh, that was the idea," Morrissey agreed. 

"I'll take my time," Johnny sighed. 

He tangled his body with Morrissey's and did his best to avoid looking him in the face. He didn't feel as though he could handle the directions their personal relationships had headed in, within the group and outside of it. Things were starting to implode. It had all become too close, too insular, and he had woke up one day earlier in the year and found himself feeling as though he had lost his sense of the whole by worrying so much about things on Morrissey's behalf when he had his own life and a wife to be thinking about. So he had started to withdraw. To put more space between him and Morrissey, to stop catering to his every whim. He had allowed it to go on too long, and it had gone too far. He knew it well enough himself after trying very hard to ignore it, but he didn't think Morrissey had a clue. 

Johnny kissed him deeply and then trailed kisses along neck and his shoulders, his hands moving along his partner's body. The buildup was taking longer than usual, but Johnny had drank enough throughout the evening to appreciate the extra time to work up the arousal himself. Morrissey sighed and tried to focus on the sensation of Johnny's lips and his hands touching him, but his body refused to react. He felt nothing. He was too rattled from his recent negative interactions with Johnny to be able to perform sexually, and his mind refused to go quiet while his body was intertwined with Johnny's, as it usually did. 

The thought that the gulf between the two of them had expanded so far that he could no longer be intimate with Johnny quickly came to mind, and Morrissey was suddenly overtaken with anxiety. It was an old fear that had returned to him with sudden and shocking clarity. Before Johnny, there had been no one that Morrissey felt truly compatible with. Not in music, not in sex, and certainly not in love. In the years of his early twenties before he had taken up with Johnny, he had tried and failed a number of times, and then came to fear that it would never happen. That there would never be anyone that he would be compatible with in the ways that he had needed so desperately. That he would never be able to feel the joys of sex with a partner he completely trusted, that he would never know love. Johnny had saved him from all of that. And if all of the issues he had been dealing with in recent months led to the connection the two of them shared failing, if Johnny was preparing to leave him, if the intimacy they had was going to be taken away - he didn't know what he could do, how he could go on if he had to return to that sense of oblivion again. 

"John- I can't," Morrissey said quickly. Johnny rolled off of him, trying to give him space, and Morrissey sat up and put his head in his hands, turning his back to his partner. 

"What is it now?" 

"I- physically, I can't," Morrissey said. He dropped his head, flushed with shame, and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. His body was betraying him yet again. 

"Oh," Johnny replied.

He rolled onto his back and put one of his arms behind his head, looking at Morrissey's broad back. He had certainly done it himself, too much drink, too many drugs, but as he wracked his mind trying to think of it, he couldn't remember a single instance in which Morrissey hadn't been able to get it up. He had almost been insatiable when they first began sleeping together, as he'd never had a proper sexual relationship before, and that matched the younger man's high level of arousal quite well. Even when drinking, Morrissey could maintain the same level of arousal. There were a number of times when he was even more keen to fuck and to be rough and open and passionate when he had been drinking. This was something new for both of them to deal with. 

"Well, that's all right. You've witnessed it happen to me before. You'll be fine by morning once you've sobered up."

"I haven't drank more than two glasses of wine," Morrissey remarked. 

"It happens," Johnny shrugged. 

"I wanted it. It's embarrassing," Morrissey mumbled. He didn't feel he could look at him, see that pitying expression coming from the person he loved. 

"Come on, forget it. I'm knackered anyway," Johnny said. 

"Okay," Morrissey said softly. His shoulders were rounded and he sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. "I'd like to go lie down, I'm sorry. I feel awful all of a sudden." He started to get up, but before he could stand, Johnny grabbed his arm and forced him to stay where he was. 

"We can't even talk?" Johnny asked hotly. 

"Please don't do this to me," Morrissey said. 

"So you're not talking about sex," Johnny surmised. 

"I didn't want to try to talk, I wanted sex. But I can't do that either now." 

Johnny let go of his arm at that, and Morrissey walked away from him for once. Johnny sat up, noting that he hadn't bothered to turn on the light to the bedroom. He put another log on the fire to keep the cottage warm and thought about leaving for a couple of minutes before turning and joining Morrissey in the bedroom. He couldn't bring himself to look at him until he was in bed next to him, but waiting to look at him didn't make him feel any less guilty when he finally did. He'd been crying, and there was a sense of despair visible from just looking at him. Morrissey tried to bring his hand up to his eyes to stop Johnny from seeing, but his body shook when he tried to take a deep breath to calm down, and Johnny knew it all too well. 

He had lost his place in the narrative, and had become powerless as a result of it. The intimacy between the two of them had officially splintered. They were no longer writing together, they couldn't talk to each other, and they were no longer sleeping together. He had feared that he was becoming completely redundant; Johnny was writing songs with other people, spending most of his time away from him, and got his fill sexually with his wife. There was a purposeful separateness between the two of them, and everything that had once bonded them together looked to be leaving him, with the possibility of a return to the life he had hated looming over him.


End file.
